Wednesday, 3 September 2025 08:01 pm
Book Review: First Among Sequels
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deckardcanineDespite the title's implication, this is the fifth Thursday Next novel, not the second. That said, it reportedly kicks off a second series. While published in 2007, only 2 years after the previous entry, it's set 14 years later, in 2002.
I knew I was in for a zany ride from the first sentence: "The dangerously high level of the stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in The Owl that morning." Sure enough, curiously named first-person narrator Thursday Next is far from the most curious thing in her version of England. And the above conflict is far from the most central to the plot.
Thursday works in two special operations fields, one for policing time travel and one for policing literature. I don't mean the latter in a Big Brother way; she's one of the few "Outlanders" to enter the realm of fiction, where characters are aware of their medium. If you're thinking Myst, that's just a start. You'll enjoy those parts more if you know a lot of classics. I recognized about half the cited titles.
Thursday reports that past books about her are only loosely based on her actual adventures. She also alludes to an out-of-print fifth book that I'm sure never existed in our world. We come to meet her alternate selves: the mawkish, New Agey Thursday5 and the gritty, insufferable Thursday1-4. The latter becomes one of the main villains.
Being an accomplished agent with high veto power puts Thursday at the center of a lot of controversies. One involves declining readership in connection with declining patience, which, in turn, has something to do with a temporal anomaly. Thursday's presently teenage son, Friday, is supposedly destined for greatness in the ChronoGuard, but as the projected deadline approaches, he shows no interest in doing much of anything. And some shady business folk who've run afoul of Thursday plan to profit from the end of literature as we know it.
For maybe half the volume, events are fairly episodic. We get sporadic mentions of overarching issues, but it takes a while before Thursday really has to focus on the most pressing. I found the remainder less funny but more digestible, if only because I finally got into the rhythm of it all.
Indeed, FAS reminds me why I had trouble sticking with Douglas Adams, Doctor Who, and other British bizarreness (except Monty Python sketches, which don't require long-term continuity). It's hard enough dealing with one unworldly, quasi-logical premise; to have them pile up risks mental blowout. No wonder Jasper Fforde himself got disenchanted with the subject of time travel.
Fans of FAS warn that it's not a great starting point, what with all the callbacks. They're right, but I think I'd still be weirded out if I began with The Eyre Affair. So much for my prior claim to have become a Fforde fan.
My next read is A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, whom I recently discovered is Ursula Vernon. I've been enjoying her Hamster Princess kid lit (not reviewed here), so now I'll try a darker fairy tale take.
I knew I was in for a zany ride from the first sentence: "The dangerously high level of the stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in The Owl that morning." Sure enough, curiously named first-person narrator Thursday Next is far from the most curious thing in her version of England. And the above conflict is far from the most central to the plot.
Thursday works in two special operations fields, one for policing time travel and one for policing literature. I don't mean the latter in a Big Brother way; she's one of the few "Outlanders" to enter the realm of fiction, where characters are aware of their medium. If you're thinking Myst, that's just a start. You'll enjoy those parts more if you know a lot of classics. I recognized about half the cited titles.
Thursday reports that past books about her are only loosely based on her actual adventures. She also alludes to an out-of-print fifth book that I'm sure never existed in our world. We come to meet her alternate selves: the mawkish, New Agey Thursday5 and the gritty, insufferable Thursday1-4. The latter becomes one of the main villains.
Being an accomplished agent with high veto power puts Thursday at the center of a lot of controversies. One involves declining readership in connection with declining patience, which, in turn, has something to do with a temporal anomaly. Thursday's presently teenage son, Friday, is supposedly destined for greatness in the ChronoGuard, but as the projected deadline approaches, he shows no interest in doing much of anything. And some shady business folk who've run afoul of Thursday plan to profit from the end of literature as we know it.
For maybe half the volume, events are fairly episodic. We get sporadic mentions of overarching issues, but it takes a while before Thursday really has to focus on the most pressing. I found the remainder less funny but more digestible, if only because I finally got into the rhythm of it all.
Indeed, FAS reminds me why I had trouble sticking with Douglas Adams, Doctor Who, and other British bizarreness (except Monty Python sketches, which don't require long-term continuity). It's hard enough dealing with one unworldly, quasi-logical premise; to have them pile up risks mental blowout. No wonder Jasper Fforde himself got disenchanted with the subject of time travel.
Fans of FAS warn that it's not a great starting point, what with all the callbacks. They're right, but I think I'd still be weirded out if I began with The Eyre Affair. So much for my prior claim to have become a Fforde fan.
My next read is A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, whom I recently discovered is Ursula Vernon. I've been enjoying her Hamster Princess kid lit (not reviewed here), so now I'll try a darker fairy tale take.
no subject